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Irrelevant? Really? WP7 is making a bet on a "closed" platform model, on .NET. The argument for native support is moot. It's not going to be supported in V1. WP7 team believes SL + XNA should provide a rich set of capabilities for application developers
targetting WP7 who also already use VS and .NET.... It's not rocket science. The company is making a bet on managed code + mobile devices. It could be that managed code will find it's soul mate in this context. Who knows? The phone isn't out yet..... Let's
give this a chance. Why not?

C

It looks to me that Microsoft is not making a bet on managed code so much as it is trying to fabricate a new platform into which it can lock developers before the rest of the world becomes compatible with its existing platform. Then after that, the new platform
will mature, at which point the cycle will repeat.

Microsoft has been advertising .NET as the greatest thing ever since around 2002, but I would not be surprised if Microsoft switches to a purely functional programming model in about 10 years and then proceeds to advertise that it is the greatest thing ever
to get the world to switch, not because it necessarily is the greatest thing ever, but because Microsoft is trying to continually lock people into a platform that allows them to indefinitely charge fees at their discretion.

I know that I am affirming the consequent by saying this, but everything Microsoft has done has been consistent with such an intention. Considering that the law of gravity is an affirmation of the consequent, I think that this kind of reasoning can be useful
when a large number of observations are all consistent with it, which is true in both the case of Microsoft and the case of gravity.

I think the resistance Microsoft has faced in terms of new versions of Windows demonstrates that people want stable APIs and mature programming models, that are supported by more companies than just Microsoft.